


storage space

by axilet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angel & Vessel Interactions, Cut Scenes from other works, Gen, Might Get Finished Someday, Snippets, Team Free Will 2.0, Work In Progress, but probably not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-03-06 08:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3127358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axilet/pseuds/axilet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since Claire Novak is back I'll probably be getting into SPN fandom again. Posting my years-long WIPs in the hope I can get around to finishing them (though probably not). Mostly Novakangst with a little Winchester thrown in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angel Vessels Anonymous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They all said ‘yes’ for some reason or other. AVA is there to help them through the part where they beat themselves up for being so freaking stupid. Takes place in some unspecified neutral dimension from after 5.22 up to 6.12.

By more or less unanimous vote Nick gets to be the chairman - he’s the one who had been hanging off the Devil’s shoulder throughout most of the Apocalypse and wears his guilt like bloodstains on a coat.  It was figured that the poor guy needed some form of compensation. Sam sulks for a while but if he has blood on his hands then Nick is swimming in a veritable gallon of the stuff.  **  
**

Nick starts off the very first session of Angel Vessels Anonymous (AVA) with a roll call. Not everyone who had signed up for vessel duty for the last Apocalypse are there - either they’re well-adjusted and down with the whole thing, the lucky bastards, or they’re uncomfortable with discussing their personal issues with the guy who was Lucifer’s front man for the whole operation. **  
**

Sam and Adam are there, looking a little singed after another one of Lucifer’s and Michael’s little spats. This is one of the few respites they enjoy from the brotherly squabbling and so they stretch out across the plastic folding chairs and help each other put out the last of the hellfire before the sensors go off and drench everyone in holy water. **  
**

Jimmy Novak sits nearby hitting it off with, fittingly enough, the woman who had agreed to be the vessel of Castiel’s lieutenant, Heather Mason. He is decked out in casual clothes sans the trenchcoat everyone has gotten used to seeing on Castiel. But then everyone has gotten used to seeing Nick’s face half melting off and they are quick to adjust. **  
**

Then there are others Nick isn’t too familiar with, either being unimportant in Lucifer’s eyes or dead long before he got busted out of Hell. Zack Adler sits closest to the exit, looking as though he’s wondering what the hell he is doing here, probably because out of them all he is the oldest and the only one still sticking to anything remotely resembling business attire while Donnie Finnerman, who had been practically burned right out of his own body, looks the most shellshocked.

**(...)**


	2. take me as i am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if envesselation took place by a different process?

Jimmy’s mind brims with fearful images that beat at the confines of its skull. Shivering he wraps his arms around himself, that fragile frame of nerves and veins and bones crudely constructed in the image of God from materials already dead or dying. Yet the spark of his soul shines on, undiminished, eternal; a rare flower in a garden of decay. Castiel longs to pluck it and hide it and nurture it into its fullest bloom, safe from any harm; but they live now in a time of war where the enemy is legion and swords are few. Jimmy Novak offers himself up and Castiel can only accept. 

(Castiel answers. Castiel sings. Each voice a different tone but all in harmony.)

_your blade of faith is strong but_   
_dulled with its sheath of mortal flesh **  
**_

_we will cleanse you_   
_we will strip you_   
_we will devour you_   
_all that is corrupted and corruptible_   
_all that is doomed to decay_

Jimmy Novak's heart hammers at the bars of its cage as if seeking escape from its fate. He is terrified and shaking and crying with the horror of his decision but his mind answers an instant before his voice, and he whispers, “ Yes. ”  **  
**

Castiel swells with love and joy and gratitude, rushing forward to encircle Jimmy in xir embrace. **  
**

_Heaven will never forget your sacrifice._

I _will never forget._

“Keep my family safe,” Jimmy chokes out. “Since I, I won’t be around, anymore...to protect them…”

 _So long as I exist,_ Castiel reassures, _you too will always exist to keep my promise._

The circle of wings tighten, drawing Jimmy near. His eyes slip shut. The blades of the feathers turn inward, almost delicately severing Jimmy’s throat, his tendons and his spine in a unified stroke. Castiel catches him before he can fall, prehensile limbs curling lovingly around the lower half of his body. He is dying but still alive and aware, the mirrors of his eyes catching the reflection of the angel for an instant before they shatter into darkness forever.

“This will be over soon,” Castiel says aloud through one of xir many human faces. Not, _there will be no pain._  Castiel has never lied to his vessels and will not begin today.

(...)

It is the song that wakes her and pulls her to the window, where the patch of night framed by the curtains glows bright as day. She brushes one aside and of course she looks into the garden below.

The angel has beautiful wings, six in total; huge and smooth and whiter than a swan’s but for the long tapering tips pinning her father’s body to the ground. Its implacable golden eyes, spinning slowly about the shifting bulk of its body like tiny suns, gaze everywhere at once; at the dying man, at his daughter shocked into still silence. Night after night she will see again: the curved trellis of his ribs like a grisly cornucopia, his calmly beating heart. His eyes in the murmuring light brimming over into a smile she has never seen before. Something in her curls and clenches, as though around a bullet fired into some vulnerable, essential part. And just like that, she hates him.

(...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this happened because of Hannibal season 2.


	3. The Children's Crusade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Free Will 2.0 fic featuring Claire, Jesse and Ben teaming up to take down Godstiel. Originally meant to be posted for Summergen 2012, but was never finished.

The second time Claire meets Castiel, it is in the kitchen with the ashes of a dead angel spitting and cooling on the linoleum and the sharp tang of ozone in her nose and mouth. It’ll take forever to get that out, she thinks, dimly, somewhere in the midst of the all-consuming terror and entirely on auto-pilot her hand continues its trajectory  and buries the cleaver right in the center of Castiel’s--her father’s--chest. **  
**

“It appears that I was just in time,” he tells her, gently healing himself with nary a twitch of his eye. Claire remains incapable of thought, much less coherent speech. “My enemies will do anything to gain an advantage over me, it seems, no matter how dishonorable. You are in great danger, Claire.” **  
**

Claire steps away as he draws near, the soles of her bare feet scraping grittily against the floor, destroying the deceptively pretty wing pattern; a vain attempt to escape the pull of his presence, as if any planet could ever escape the orbit of its sun. The drumbeat of her heart pounds in her ears, vibrating through the column of her throat; she can barely recognize her own voice when she says, “She--she was trying to kill me.” **  
**

Castiel nods. Every line of his stolen body conveys sadness and regret, but Claire knows better than to trust a puppet in the hands of a master manipulator. “This is your fault again,” she accuses. Parts of her are screaming, that ingrained obedient little girl who’s saying you can’t speak to an angel of God this way and the infinitely wiser girl she is now who’s saying he can vaporize you with a touch, idiot but those voices are faint and distorted through the hot, instinctive anger that rises up, seeing her father’s dead body still upright and walking the earth. Blessed is he who dies in the Lord; but Claire only sees an abomination. **  
**

“You are a target because of me, yes,” Castiel admits. “Yet my promise to your father stands. The coming days hold great tribulations, but you will remain safe, you and your mother both. This I swear.” **  
**

“That’s--” Claire bites down hard on the words, but Castiel looks right through her and there is no use hiding anything from him. And he just looks so damn - sad, like it’s such a pity about everything that had to happen. Like there had been no other way. And maybe there wasn’t. Maybe Claire is just a selfish little girl who didn’t care if the world burned, if it meant her father would never have to go away with the angel and leave her and mom behind. **  
**

“Claire ...“ Castiel starts, stretching out his hand to her, slowly, as though she’s a wounded animal. He looks sincere; Claire is stricken with the compulsive urge to reciprocate; to strip his skin from his bones and climb inside where they will be one again in that shared place where lies are impossible. She trembles. Her father’s hand had been so large and warm when she was a child, so comforting in the nights when he brushed the sweat from her brow and defended her from the monsters lurking under the bed. Daddy’s girl, Mom had said, laughing, and not all of Claire has managed to grow up from being that girl. If eyes are the windows to the soul, Castiel is the only one looking out. But still, she can’t help searching, can’t help wanting to reach back and touch the tips of her fingers to his if only to play pretend at a normal life with a normal father; for just one moment... **  
**

A door slams upstairs. “Claire?” Mom says. “What’s taking so long?” Her voice skitters higher up an octave with fear. They are always afraid, these days; there are so many things they know they must be afraid of in order to survive. “Claire, answer me!” **  
**

Claire turns to respond before Mom can assume the worst, and when she looks back she is the only one in the room, a breeze on her face and the sound of wings growing faint in her ears. **  
**

* * *

Claire remembers this, later, when Heaven is breaking, when its shining pieces fall from the sky and set the rest of the world alight. She remembers when the fire never touches her, when she and her mother alone walk unharmed through the bones of the dying city; Lot and his family delivered from the judgements of Sodom and Gomorrah. He only promised to save us. She feels nothing; she shuts down under the onslaught of feeling too much too fast. This wasn’t what Dad wanted. Dad wanted to save everyone. A slow spark in her, building, burning; it will find plenty of kindling to set aflame before the day is done.

“It was supposed to be over,” Mom says, blankly. What she’s actually saying: his sacrifice was for nothing. Claire finds it hard to disagree. She slips her hand into her mother’s; after a second, Mom squeezes, hard, and doesn’t let go. **  
**

"There’ll be other survivors,” Claire offers. “Let’s go look for them.” What she’s actually saying: screw the angels, we’re the only ones who can help ourselves. **  
**

Mom gives a single tight nod, but the lines of tension in her face and shoulders relax, and she even manages to find a smile. “That’s true,” she agrees. “The world’s a big place, after all.”

They pick their way through the rubble towards the promise of the distant horizon, and don’t look back.

* * *

 The first time Claire meets the Antichrist, she almost blesses his hand right off the rest of his body. In the crowded remnants of a former stadium they shake hands, there’s a flash of white and burning and the next thing she knows he’s kneeling on the ground in shock as an entire ring of guns rise up to point at Claire while she stammers apologies and denials.  **  
**

“I think we have a mutual acquaintance,” Jesse tells her in private, when he no longer has something resembling an overcooked piece of meat at the end of his arm. He isn’t quite joking when he says, “Does this mean I’m kind of your evil opposite?” **  
**

“What?” Claire says. **  
**

“You’re the beloved of God,” he says patiently. “I’m the one who is going to pull him out of the sky and kill him for messing around with us.” **  
**

Claire thinks about every ruined city she and her mother had trekked through, every half-dead body they had pulled out and brought along with them. How she could barely recognize Pontiac, the place of her birth. How all the friends and neighbors she’d grown up with are gone. For the sake of a pointless war. **  
**

And she says: “Count me in.” **  
**

* * *

God meant well when He left the world, but the problem with empty thrones is that there’s always going to be someone trying to claim them.

(...)


	4. two and a half men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Third installment in _Hell Hath Such Fury_. What if Dean chose Adam instead?
> 
> Warnings for suicidal ideation and some hell-related imagery.

Adam screams.

His throat is raw and bleeding but he just can’t stop.  He does not understand. It’s _night_ , his eyes are open as far as they will go and he can’t see a thing, it’s night but still he’s hurting, he’s burning up _oh God oh Michael please make it stop._ He gropes deliriously at his own body, ragged nails catching on something hot and horribly slick when he tries to seize that terrible tormenting fire in his hands, and tear it free--

“Jesus, what’s he _doing_?”

“How should _I_ know?” a familiar voice replies. “And you were just going to dump _this_ level of bugfuck crazy right into my headspace...”

“Sam,” he forces out. That’s right, he’s not alone, he remembers in a brief flicker of clarity. _Someday, somehow, we’ll show those bastards. We’ll get out together._ “Sam, what’s happening?”

There’s a pause. “Hey, Adam,” his brother says. One broad palm alights on his forehead, soaking up the heat. “You’re safe from the big bad archangel. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Adam leans into the touch; not understanding but trusting. He stays still, breathing shallowly and open-mouthed in case he agitates too much the fiery monster gnawing at his flesh. Then cold hands grip the sides of his head; cold enough to quench the flames, and quiet its crackling spiteful voice. Adam sobs in relief, his lids sliding shut over his boiling eyeballs. For the first time in too long, he sleeps.

* * *

 It’s Dean sitting at his bedside when he wakes up; Dean who later teaches him how to pack rock salt into shotgun shells,  to throw together his own ghost detection thingamajig out of dime store materials and MacGyverian ingenuity. Adam rides shotgun and listens to Dean’s lectures on the merits of the Impala and the songs on his favorite radio channels vs the sad state of modern cars and music. Adam thumbs through newspapers bought from gas stations and trawls occult websites on crappy motel wifi while trying very, very hard not to feel like a temp vying for the position of Dean’s little brother, and trying very, very hard not to wonder just why one would be needed.  

 _Don’t scratch that wall,_ Death had warned. _You won’t like what happens._

Adam can’t stop himself any more than he can order  his bones not to knit if he were to break his arm or leg. What was split yearns to be whole. The barrier had seemed so strong when Death had raised it, impenetrable; Adam is slowly realizing that this particular metaphysical construct is as vulnerable to erosion as the real thing, and must, as all walls do, eventually fall.

Then there’s his fellow sufferer-in-arms - Sam Winchester.

Efficient as clockwork, lining up cases and knocking them over with the precision of a master bowler, he gives all appearances of having, incredibly, impossibly, moved on; shrouding the furniture, shuttering the windows, locking the doors and losing the key, and then walking away to let the past decay into dust. He’s changed, but of course he’s changed. Adam isn’t in any position to start casting stones, but he can envy. Adam has dreams where his flesh turns to glass and he can look right through himself to the calcified ugliness enshrined within, the flaw that never can be repaired but somehow Sam has found a way to bury Hell, deeper than even the secret haven of his heart; such that it’s as if nothing ever happened.

So, Adam keeps his silence.

He is twenty-two years and several hellish eternities old. He has been raised from the dead twice, first by bona fide angels of the Lord and second by an anthropomorphic personification of Death. He’s in good company; the frequency with which he and his half-brothers have crossed  the supposedly one-way border between life and death should have earned them enough dimensional miles to redeem a set of revolving doors complete with an engraving of their names in fancy font.

Adam wakes up every morning contemplating if it really counts as suicide if he takes out the gun from under his pillow and blows his brains out. After all, he’s technically an undead abomination attempting to return to its natural state; on the other hand, maybe whoever handles the paperwork is an asshole literalist stickler for the rules. (Otherwise pronounced _angel_ ). Adam doesn’t risk it. He misses Mom so badly but he learned patience, down in the pit. He can wait. He’s not alone, after all. He’s got the brothers he never knew he had, a special two-for-one exchange. He’s got _family_.

The word is bitter ashes in his mouth, these days.

* * *

 “I could help you,” Sam says. “If that’s what you need.”

It’s been awhile since they were alone in a room without Dean hovering somewhere nearby to supervise the crazy people. Adam’s traitorous heart knocks against the cage of his ribs; his teeth, the back of his eyes, the besieged wall in his mind. Sam looks on him in a mixture of contempt and pity: _I’m so sorry you’re so pathetic._ “What do you think it is I need?” he asks as though he doesn’t already know.

“It wouldn’t be suicide,” Sam says, still so gently. So kindly and reasonably. His hand on Adam’s shoulder is warm and reassuring. “It wouldn’t even be murder. You know it’s only going to get worse. But no matter how bad it gets...Dean’s never going to give up or let you go.” His brother’s name is accented with the slightest touch of mockery; spoken as it is by the voice of bitter experience. “After all, you’re family.”

Sick with confusion and desire Adam can only stare, Sam’s offer resonating too closely with his darkest thoughts for him to simply shrug it off. “Just think about it.” Sam abruptly retreats. It takes another few seconds for Adam to register the sound of bare feet on the steps. “What were you talking about?” Dean demands with no subtlety whatsoever, his eyes flicking from one of them to the other.

“Research,” Sam says without hesitation, all smiling innocence. “Adam’s helping me out on my latest case.” He holds out one heavy tome in invitation to join in the hunt and everything almost seems normal, almost if the lingering warmth from his hand doesn’t still burn like a brand on Adam’s shoulder.

“Thanks but no thanks.” Dean grunts, turning towards Adam. “You’ll be doing Sam a bigger favor if you let him cuddle with his lady loves in private. And you’re dead on your feet,” he adds frankly. “Keep this up and you’ll be dead for real. C’mon, Adam.” And he takes his arm in a firm grip.

Adam is stunned by the sudden shock of his epiphany: Dean doesn’t want him anywhere near Sam. He’s come to accept the Winchester duo’s newly strained relationship but deep down he’s always kept faith in the permanence of the bedrock beneath any sand that might erode away. Things have changed irrevocably and Adam cannot avoid the conclusion he draws like a dagger turned towards his own heart: _so this is why Dean wanted a new little brother._

“Something’s wrong,” he says once they’re back in their room--an accusation, but he’s not sure yet of what.

Dean doesn’t confirm or deny. “This isn’t the time or place,” he mutters.

“You owe this to me at any time or place I’m asking!” Adam snaps, beyond fed up--of all the lies, the secrecy, the goddamn kid gloves like he’s made of delicate crystal. But Dean’s face is hard with resolution. “Don’t scratch that wall, Adam,” is all he says.

It’s only his desire for answers that holds Adam back from throttling his half-brother. “Something’s wrong with _Sam_ ,” he pushes, knowing he’s struck the bull’s eye when Dean stiffens. “What happened to him, why aren’t we the same? After what we went through together, did you think I wouldn’t guess eventually--or I wouldn’t give a shit?”

Dean’s eyes widen, and it’s only then Adam realizes that he’s shouting-- _screaming_ , his voice skating shrilly over the edge of hysteria. He steps back and tries to calm the hell down, but somehow the floor is slipping and sliding under his feet as if determined to trip him up and throw him back into the nightmare, the always waiting cage.

He’s stopped now but the screaming hasn’t. Adam doubles over, shivering as violently as though trapped in the heart of winter. A memory comes to him borne on the foul breeze blowing through the cracks in the wall and it’s of his own hands, blackened with frostbite and swollen into deformity with the hills and valleys of broken bone. His stomach heaves and roils and Adam shuts his eyes when he gags to avoid the vivid sight of bloody scrambled guts on the ground, the sickening sizzling stench of himself as he cooked in the scorching heat.

Dean holds him up while he retches strings of saliva and last night’s dinner, and during the whole ordeal refrains from saying _I told you so_ for which Adam is grateful. “Sam and I, we’ve made our choices,” he says quietly afterward. His eyes are full of old wounds ripped open and while they are quick to heal or at least scab over he is in this moment vulnerable. But Adam cannot too much appreciate the small concession nor the means by which he won it. “There’s nothing you can do for Sam. He’s safe, he’s sane...” Adam hears audibly the painful swallowing of the words not like you. “Just let it go.”

 _But Dean, you don’t ever let family go_ , Adam wants to say, lost and terrified as a child. _If you can let Sam go, what about_ me _?_ But his big brother’s arms are around him, tethering him to safety in the midst of a red and violent sea and Adam can do little but hold on.

They don’t speak about it come morning, or the mornings after. Sam never makes the offer again but it remains there between them like a thrown gauntlet, a challenge; as the days pile up Adam has to wonder which his continuing refusal to accept is greater proof of, his courage or his cowardice.

He is so _tired_.

* * *

 “You should never have been involved,” Castiel says. “I am so sorry.”

_For what?_

Castiel's palm touches his head. Adam finds out.

* * *

 “You should just put him out of his misery,” Sam says, cold, dispassionate.

“He’s our brother.” Dean spits the words out like bloody teeth. “I _know_ you’re a soulless freak, you don’t have to keep reminding me.”

“If you won’t dirty your own hands, I’m more than willing to do it.” Sam steps forward but Dean moves to stand squarely in his path, quivering with grief and rage. Betrayal after betrayal have stretched his nerves to breaking point and he is poised to deal serious damage to the almost-stranger he still calls brother if he dares touch one hair on Adam’s head.

“You only _think_ you care so much about him,” Sam sneers, raising his voice to be heard over the wild, blood-frothed shrieks. “The ugly truth is that you traded my soul for his, and your oh-so-noble sacrifice would be wasted if you let him slip through your fingers without a fight.” He smiles. “Isn’t that right, Dean?”

“You’re _wrong_ ,” Dean says. “Given two shitty choices I picked one shitty choice. I gotta live with that, with _him_ , to the bitter end.” He tries and fails to look at Adam’s contorting body bruising itself against the straps holding him down. “I owe him, to keep tryin’...” His eyes flicker shut in a sudden, pain-filled spasm. “Just like my own little brother used to do for me.”

Sam is shaking his head. “Don’t thank me, Dean,” he murmurs, sounding almost sad--as if he still had a proper heart to feel sadness with. “Not if this was what I kept you living for.”

* * *

 “You don’t have to, Adam,” his mother says. “You owe them nothing.”

The two of them stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the converted barn that had once played host to a bunch of high school kids, drunk on high spirits and smuggled alcohol. Streamers of crepe and glitter paper wave limply in the turgid breeze, tattered and stained with dark ichor. Adam can barely remember anymore what it was like to be one of them, in all their impossible youth, their innocence almost a greater abomination than what he has become. He yearns for that ignorance but also at once fears it; all the knowledge that corrupts him now his one sure weapon against the darkness that had taken him and his mother so violently.

The doors are cracked open the slightest inch. A thin ribbon of blood unspools within as if in invitation.

Kate Milligan’s grip on his arm tightens. “We could leave,” she says, tempting, pleading--a final desperate warning from himself to himself. “We could leave and build a life for ourselves here, and be happy. You would never know the difference if you let yourself forget.”  She touches one hand to his face. “Please, my son...please reconsider.”

Adam doesn’t allow himself even a glance at the echo of his mother or his resolutions will end up crumbling into dust. “I’m sorry, Mom. I have to do this.” He draws in a breath and out again, the taste of iron and decay lingering like an oil slick on his tongue. “Please don’t worry. I’ll see you again one day.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Mom says softly, her voice choked with grief. She lets go and Adam knows instantly that she’s gone, the last guardian vanquished. He takes a step forward, then another, and the doors open to welcome him into the fetid dark.

* * *

 “You idiot,” Adam rasps as he drives with greater speed than care. The road ahead shines with a slick wrong wetness in the orange light broken in intervals by dark _shapes_  he has to avoid examining too closely; harder to ignore is the soft squelching as he plows through the obstacles in his path. _They’re not really there_ battles in his head with the visceral horror of the transgression against all sense and sanity.

“You’re welcome,” Sam calls from the backseat. A flash of him passes across the mirror, garish red and black. The awful sounds he makes as he moves around are worse: papery and crackling, charred skin flaking off in pieces as it passes over the leather.

Adam’s hold on the steering wheel slips again. Though he knows it’s only the sweat pouring from his feverish body, through the haze of hellish fire he sees vividly his hands gloved up to the elbows in blood. Sam’s blood. Adam breathes through his mouth, quick and shallow, to combat the nausea in his gut but really there’s nothing left for him to throw up. “You’re not here,” he forces out. “I know where the _real_ Sam is…”

“Are you sure?” Sam says quietly. The jagged edges of his voice saw painfully along Adam’s fraying nerves. “How can you be so sure, Adam?”

“You promised,” Adam insists with less stubbornness than desperation. “We had a plan. Damn our angels and escape together.”

“I’ve broken so many promises, Adam, why should this be any different?” But there is regret underlying the scorn in Sam’s voice. “That creature was never me, Adam. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, even to spare you from further torture. I’m your _brother_.”

“But I’m here,” Adam whispers, even as he is betrayed by his own uncertainty, shaking his voice into a child’s plea, shaking him all the way into his innermost self: “If there was any chance to escape...any chance at all...Dean would never have taken only me and left you behind.”

“True,” Sam says. “Assuming there were only those two choices.” The startlingly white glint of his teeth flashes stark in the bitter curve of his mouth. “Maybe there was a third choice you never realized existed. Life is all about compromise.”

Adam gags as the stench of frying flesh and hair fills the interior of the car in a foul miasma, the suddenness of it like a physical blow; in the back Sam sits impassively as his body begins to melt, running in rivulets over and through the collapsing wreck of his skeleton like wax.

“The flesh may be abused, may sicken and die,” Lucifer muses through a broad, smirking grin growing all the wider as it is swiftly freed from the constraints of its gums and lips “And yet, eternally, the soul endures...”

He’s gone. But Adam is still here; Adam is sitting frozen in his seat and staring straight ahead, eyes stretched so wide open as if he is hoping they will fall out and render him blind to what he had just seen.

All this time. A minor eternity dropping like lost coins into the cracks between the fleetly passing seconds. The dashboard clock blinks redly at him; counting, weighing, measuring. His thoughts scrabble like fingers on the edge of an abyss. If he looks down, if he lets go...

Adam can’t afford the luxury of a complete and utter breakdown. He reaches for the knife on the passenger seat. _You've been hurt much, much worse than this_ , he tells himself as he unsheaths it. _This is nothing_.

The knife sinks into his flesh so, so easily, and he never once makes a sound.

* * *

 Lucky him, he arrives just in time to witness the rebirth of God and the fall of the old order. It’s not like Adam will be crying any tears over that particular loss but as he crouches amid the pathetic ruins of his family it’s not clear that the new head honcho will be any better.

“You lied to me,” Adam says.

The time for playing dumb is long over. Dean says bleakly, “I only wanted to protect you.”

“Yeah?” Adam says. “Your track record for protecting your little brothers is just _impeccable_.”

It’s a low blow, and completely unfair. Dean sets his jaw and goes to check up on Sam to avoid punching out the invalid like he obviously wants to. Adam sits there thinking about the promise he never got to keep; selfish Winchester, only concerned about himself not being able to heroically save other people. Hey look. He’s practically one of the family already.

But Sam is sick, messed up by whatever it was Castiel did to _him_ \--and no matter how much Adam wants to brood, or rail at Dean or the new God about the unfairness of it all, now isn't the time. Adam can take the very smallest of comforts that the Sam he knew topside _wasn't_ the one he lived and died with for eternities in the cage. Adam can still love Sam, even if that Sam is lost forever.

**(...)**


	5. it's a feature, not a bug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the end of Season 4, Jimmy gets to meet his Maker.

“So much for getting stuck as a vessel for a thousand years,” Jimmy muttered. He looked around the living room at said vessel—splattered across the TV screen, staining the sofa and scattered about a dozen other places he didn’t care to look at too closely—lit up in lurid detail by the holy being standing next to him.

 “Sorry.” God offered a shrug—from what Jimmy could see of Him, anyway, since so much brilliance was streaming off him that he made Castiel look like a mere light bulb in comparison. “Those kids can get a little…enthusiastic at times.” He brushed at His shirt, winced at what was on it, and hastily wiped the hand on the nearest absorbent surface.

 “ _Your_ archangel blew me up,” Jimmy said flatly. “Aren’t there ways of de-angelizing somebody without breaking the poor schlub who only said yes? They seemed to manage that well enough last time.” He sighed—his worst reaction to this whole mess so far, which surprised him only mildly. After all, he’d been as good as dead, and it was nice to be able to move and talk of his own free will again. Even nicer was to have someone who could hear him and respond, even if that someone was the Creator and ruler of the Universe, and his personal God until recent events had informed him that He was a terrible father who couldn’t survive a parental support class, much less guide Jimmy through the tangled morass that his life had become.

God crossed His arms defensively over His chest. “Hey, I heard that.” 

(...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even sure where this was supposed to go. Probably really cracky places.


	6. and all god's children say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My unfinished piece for Novakbang, a long long time ago. 4.20 AU where Castiel manages to slip in a message to Jimmy warning the Winchesters NOT to kill Lilith.

Jimmy wakes to a bad headache and the stench of ozone in the air.

The first thing he does is call _Castiel._ With his mouth and with his mind, as instinctive as breathing. That comes second, long choking gasps as his body reminds him that it exists, that it has lungs and a stomach and all the other necessary needs it’s gone too long without. He tries to sit up, and amazement swamps him when his body actually _obeys_ his mental commands, leans against the wall and looks around, and he sees what his eyes see and hears what his ears hear. It should have been momentous, and it is, but most of that is lost in the disorientation that swamps him when he registers where exactly he is: what looks like a typical hotel room, complete with bland wallpaper, potted plant, writing table, TV set - down to the too-soft bed he is currently lying on.

For a moment, he thinks - he hopes - it was only a dream. It must have been a dream, everything, even the light and the sound and the blazing heat that feels like it had left his skin and his soul a solid sheet of scar tissue. It had poured into him and drowned him and almost killed him but he is still alive, he is awake here in a perfectly ordinary hotel room and any moment Amelia will walk in through the door and tell him -

_There is no door._ No windows.

This is not a dream.

It is in this second stretched thin into a horrifying infinity where he teeters over the edge of growing realization that the angel walks through the wall.

“Hello,” he says with a smooth lawyer’s smile, and Jimmy falls.

* * *

 

His name is Zachariah. The introduction is unnecessary - Jimmy had already known him, and hated him, from the very first sight of that smug face. The firmly bolted door in his head shivers with the memories banging on the other side, and his wrists give a sharp, painful throb where the silver knives had pinned them against the wall.

_"You_ ,” Jimmy snaps, on his feet almost on the tail of the angel’s greeting, old instincts kicking into gear. He wants so badly to let them take him over, to forget reason and _hurt_ the angel or punch that infuriating smile off his face at the very least. It was no dream, not even a nightmare. The sting of the betrayal is quick to translate into slow, boiling rage that thrums through his bones, the first beats of a war drum calling for blood.

“You forget your place,” Zachariah says, deceptively mild, and next moment Jimmy is on the floor throwing up blood into the carpet from what feels agonizingly like a stomach full of venomous snakes with very sharp teeth. Their coils tighten about his neck, cutting off his screams as he tries desperately to squeeze air down the narrowing tunnel of his throat. Black dots dance in front of his eyes; his world shrinks down to the terrible burning burrowing through his intestines, his own fingers digging into his flesh as though he can tear the pain right out of his own body if he tries hard enough. _God,_ he thinks suddenly, irrationally; dying spasms from the corpse of the faith he can’t quite bring himself to bury. _Oh God, Oh God -_

The chokehold on his neck ceases. Jimmy sucks in lungfuls of sweet, blessed air; rolls over onto his back and continues the exercise, resistance completely drained out of him. He doesn’t even put up a struggle when Zachariah says, “Allow me,” and kneels down to brush his fingers against his skin, quickly, like he’s touching something dirty. After that Jimmy manages to push himself up, leans his heated forehead against the bed and gasp some more until he feels almost normal again.

“I could do this as long as it takes,” Zachariah says cheerfully, brushing invisible lint off the knees of his neatly pressed trousers. “Care to try again?”

“No,” Jimmy rasps. He runs his tongue around the inside curve of his teeth, tasting the metallic tang of his blood. “You’ve made your point.”

“Sensible,” Zachariah says with approval. “If only the Winchesters were half as obedient as you,” he goes on, musing, “ there wouldn’t need to be so much of this song and dance.”

_You must warn them -_

Jimmy says nothing. Deep inside, however, the name is a trigger that jumpstarts his heart, until it beats as wildly as if he had been touched by lightning. The knowledge Castiel had entrusted to him weighs heavy with the fate of the world; he is as hyper-aware of it as he would a cancerous tumor nibbling away at his brain.

“Oh, I know you know,” Zachariah says casually. “Why bother with this otherwise?” He sweeps an arm out to indicate the room - no, the _prison_ that surrounds Jimmy. “It’s all right, I can hardly blame you.” His voice changes, becomes soft and persuasive. “Just your tough luck to be paired up with the rogue angel. Not that it’s _Castiel_ ’s fault either.” He sighs with theatrical regret.

“Where is he?” Unconsciously, Jimmy rubs his wrists; rubs them again, more convulsively, when he realizes what he’s doing.

Zachariah smiles, but there’s a dangerous light in his eyes that gives it an unpleasant edge. “Sunday school. Where all bad little angels go until they’re good again.”

“School?” Jimmy echoes.

“At home. _Heaven_.” Zachariah elaborates when Jimmy looks blank. “You won’t be aware of this, but Castiel is very young for an angel. Almost a child, compared to some of us. So easily led astray by bad influences...” He trails off, and his concerned expression twists momentarily into a sneer that he doesn’t take too great pains to hide.

Jimmy doesn’t have too long to be worried over Castiel, though, when Zachariah continues, “He’s confused. Just wait a little longer, and he’ll be your good little angel companion again.” He offers Jimmy a consoling pat on the shoulder.

Jimmy barely stops himself from flinching. “Again?” he hears himself repeat, as though from a long distance away.

Zachariah gives him a slow, considering gaze. The fingers on his shoulder twitch warningly. “Don’t be coy, Jimmy Novak. You can’t hide from _me_ \- I know what you _really_ want, deep inside.” He smirks. “I know what everybody wants. You already said yes. What’s once more?”

_That was before I found out the truth,_ Jimmy thinks. Involuntarily he remembers Castiel inside him, the golden warmth of Castiel like a second heart pulsing in rhythm with the first. The memory is poison now, as is everything he remembers from that long, crazy courtship, viewed through the lens of bitter hindsight. It was all a goddamned lie, and he’d sacrificed himself for it because sacrificing himself for a worthy cause was familiar, because of guilt, because of love. _For the world,_ Castiel had whispered into his ear. _For your family._ For Mom and apple pie, he might as well have added.

The family he’d left behind thinking he was insane, a terrible husband and father. The bodies with their eyes burned right out of the skulls, the graves of both demon and innocent human alike. The spikes of pain ramming into him through the layers of protective swaddling as his body bled and healed and bled and healed endlessly, waking him up only to have his questions ignored, his demands coldly rebuked. Castiel had what he wanted. _Go back to sleep, irritating human. Your bit part is over, now get out of the A-listers’ way._

Jimmy feels busted up and used and generally crappy and there is dried blood on his chin. Still, it’s his and he doesn’t want to give it up again. He wants to go home and pretend none of this ever happened. He wants to be ignorant, unimportant - and live happily ever after, cliche or not.

“Castiel likes you,” Zachariah says to him, low and reasonable, as though he can’t crush Jimmy’s shoulder into bone kindling with the slightest twitch, as though he hadn’t just had Jimmy do his best to vomit out his entire digestive system onto the floor. “You’re his chosen vessel...his _favorite_. If you want to back out, though...” He shrugs elaborately. “It’s not like he doesn’t have other choices. After all...it’s in the blood.”

It takes a few seconds, but Jimmy finally registers the words, comprehension hitting him like a truck. _You are the_ only _one who can help me._ He had never even imagined...but why not? It wouldn’t be the first blatantly false pick-up line Castel had fed him. Zachariah smiles, smug and knowing, and in the midst of the burning hatred a single cold thought enters like a bullet and stays, lodged in the walls of his mind: _I’m going to kill him. I don’t know how, but I will._

“I thought that might get your attention,” Zachariah practically purrs. He circles Jimmy like a shark, grinning with the same carnivorous hunger. An itching feeling begins under Jimmy’s skin, the echo of Castiel pacing and stretching inside him like a caged tiger as though in response; as though it is the only thing that is important, the only thing that Zachariah sees - a vessel, a tool to be used and discarded. Jimmy clenches his fists as the angel’s gaze catalogues him, prices him and finally dismisses him, now that the yes has been taken for granted and the job done. It is hateful and humiliating but it is true. He can’t allow anyone else to suffer what he’s experienced. _Not Claire._

“Castiel will be back soon enough,” Zachariah informs him, airy and smirking. “Lie back, relax - “ he leers slightly - “and think of Heaven.”

With one rush of wind through the room Zachariah is gone and Jimmy is alone. Only, if Zachariah’s promise holds, not for long. The anger dies, replaced by a fear that seeps all strength from his legs. He sits down, hard, and puts his head in his hands. How had it come to this?

But he knows how.

_You are chosen._

_You can help save the world._

_You can make a difference._

(...)


	7. frankenfusion fic featuring direravendeerstiel creeping on traumatised claire and serial killer jimmy jacob novak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NBC Hannibal/SPN fusion. What it says on the tin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written AGES ago, before the mindblowing heartrending mess that was the Season 2 finale. Probably will never be finished (like Bryan Fuller's vision for Hannibal, sob.)

They are in her house, in the kitchen as it was on that last awful day; her father dying in a corner, hands raised in warding or in welcome. The stag towers over them, stinking of blood, of smoke and of burnt meat. A sourceless wind threads a thin, piping sound almost like a song around the tangled brambles of its antlers, so tall that they push the ceiling up and away into endless darkness. There is red painted across its muzzle, its chest and its forelegs. Its eyes are locked with her father’s.

“Take me,” Jimmy Novak says, clear through the blood in his teeth, spilling over his lips--“Me,  just take me. _Please_.”

 _No,_ Claire tries to scream, but it comes out only as a gurgle through the wrong mouth gaping open in her neck. _No, Daddy, no._ She flounders towards him but he is miles distant on the horizon of a scarlet sea and getting further with every tortured breath whistling out of his torn lungs. Helpless she can only watch as it dips its head in acquiescence and tugs his heart bloody and beating out of his chest.

When her eyes flash open it is to filtered morning light through white curtains. The leaves of a neighboring tree whisper against the glass and for a moment she locks up and she thinks _no,_ she is on the second floor; no, she is awake, and finally no, the stag is not real. It never was. It comes to her on silent hooves out of nightmares, out of the corroded labyrinth of her father’s mind. He is undone but his works remain, forever: the dead boys and girls, her dead mother, the room of antlers. Her.

Slowly she climbs out of bed, raking her fingers through her hair. The angle of the sun in the sky tells her she is late for class; or she would be if she still had school like a normal girl. If she still had friends and family. All she has left are phantoms, and the man who killed her father.

Dean Winchester drops in on the afternoons, awkwardly trying to fill the father-shaped hole in her life as though that will atone for every bullet he had fired into Jimmy Novak’s body. His guilt seeps into his kindness like poison. They sit side by side in the rooftop garden where they can pretend to admire the plants during the inevitable lulls in conversation. Claire wants him to go. Claire wants him to stay. He had saved her but the question _for what?_ lingers in the air between them.

Into her silences Dean tells her about Dr. Moore and her relationship with his brother; shows her a picture of too many dogs and the happy couple squashed in between them. He does not talk much about himself, other than a brief reference to his job that he skates over swiftly in concession to her fragile feelings. Claire wonders if his home is as cold and bare as her hospital room, warmed only with the tokens of other people’s happiness; it seems sadly plausible.

“I want to go home,” she says quietly, as Dean is returning the creased photograph to his wallet. He looks up, stunned, a question parting his lips. “I want to see where it all happened.”

He’s shaking his head. “That is _not_ a good idea.”

“I need to know _why_ , _”_ she says.

“You say that like there’re going to beanswers,” he warns. “Or answers you’ll like.”

“Well, I could have just saved myself all the trouble and asked my dad,” Claire says. “Too bad he’s _dead_.”

Dean flinches, and she immediately feels bad. “I was supposed to convince you to go,” he says, his voice dull. He won’t look at her. “You’re a suspect, Claire. This little trip could hurt you more than you think.”

The bones of his hands stand rigid against his skin when he grips his thighs too tightly. Claire wonders which of them would actually be hurt. She’s the innocent he rescued, the one who lived at the end of the long trail of dead bodies--but in a very real way she is his salvation as well. She can see that much at least.

“It’ll be all right,” she says, reaching out to touch his shoulder in silent apology. It dips under her hand, tension running away down its slope. “You’ll be with me, won’t you?”

He nods slowly, managing a small smile. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll be there.”

* * *

Dr. Stiehl opens the door to find her on his front step without any surprise whatsoever, and invites her into his office with a smile that invokes the warmth of his fingers threaded through hers when she had first roused screaming from her nightmares. She touches her palm self-consciously and goes in after him.

There is a deer statue on a marble pedestal near Dr. Stiehl’s desk, antlers flicking up into silvered knife-points that catch at the light--only a coincidence, but her eyes can’t stop wandering over to it. Its unyielding gaze pricks her skin, and she has to suppress the paranoia that she’s being watched.

“You aren’t wrong to be confused,” Dr. Stiehl says. “Family is a complicated affair.”

In concession to the informal nature of her visit they have departed from the usual couches. She sits on the upper level of his office, legs slotted in between the balcony bars while he perches delicately on the edge of his desk. Despite the distance the electric blue of his eyes is mesmerizing; a shade more vivid than even her father’s. They had always been Amelia Novak’s favorite feature, the inspiration behind many a gift. Claire processes the memory with a low throbbing ache deep behind her eyes, a well lately tapped too deeply and often for further yield.

“He tried to kill me,” Claire says flatly. “He killed my mom. He killed--all those people, those _kids_ \--”

“He was protecting you from whatever demons there were that haunted him,” Dr. Stiehl says. “That is not, of course, an excuse. But it is an explanation which calls less for condemnation than for understanding.”

 _Take me,_ Dad had said. _Leave her--me, just take me--_

In reality he had looked at nothing but the reflection of his own insanity as he died, but he had believed. In her dreams the stag kills him when he begs with his last breath to keep it away from her. As if she is trying to absolve him, for his sake and her own, by giving shape and substance to his monster.

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand,” Claire confesses. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive.”

“Well,” Dr. Stiehl says lightly, too lightly, “I suppose that’s something we have in common.” 

Claire hesitates, but in the end she has to ask: “Who couldn’t you forgive?” 

The doctor pushes away from his desk, smiling faintly despite his grim words. “I, too, had a family once. But no longer.” His tone signals an end to the conversation, and she doesn’t push; she is a guest in his house

He agrees to drive her back to the hospital in exchange for a little knowledge. “How did you find your way here?”

“Bela Talbot smuggled me out,” she says with a shrug.

His eyebrows rise, slightly. “The crime news blogger?” His tone makes it clear that he considers that epithet far too worthy of Bela Talbot. “I doubt she did so out of the kindness of her heart.”

“She didn’t,” Claire says, getting into the car. “She was returning a favor.”

Dr. Stiehl is putting on his coat. He stiffens, hands pausing over the buttons. “What favor?”

He takes the news about the interview and the book calmer than she had expected. On the other hand, Dean Winchester ends up fulfilling every one of those expectations.

“What were you thinking?” he yells, stomping around her hospital room with all the tact and grace of a bull at the flick of a red cape. “Bela is a snake, she isn’t interested in helping you, she’s just in it for the money! She’ll twist your words into a murderer’s if she thinks there’s more profit to be made that way--”

“So what? I _need_ that money!” she yells right back. “I need to change my name and my face and move away where no one knows who my dad is, I need to be _normal!”_ Tears sting her eyes, and she barely refrains from adding: _and I sure as hell don’t_ need _two overprotective replacement father figures. No matter how nice they are to me._

Dean has the decency to look ashamed. He says, almost helplessly, “I just want you to be safe,” as if he alone can make and keep that impossible promise.

“I know,” Claire says.

They can barely look at each other, each bowed down by the weight of their mutual obligation. If she had died that day in the kitchen at her father’s hand, as he had intended, Claire is certain Dean would have moved on already. But she lingers on like a pale ghost in his world, and he, fool that he is, allows himself to be haunted.

* * *

This is the truth: Claire Novak loved, still loves, her father.

Claire never stopped loving him, even when the knife was cutting into her and her feet was slippery in her own hot blood. His dying words haunt her. She wishes he had killed out of malice, that he was possessed by an incomprehensible evil that she could easily despise and denounce. But he died in fear and in love, and that makes it worse, that she was never betrayed, that up to the end she was the beloved daughter of Jimmy Novak.

Of course, now she knows that he was more than he seemed. There were sides to her father he had deliberately hidden from her, whether out of an effort to protect her or himself she can never know.

Like the room where they found the black-feathered stag, and opened wide the door to let it into her head.

Her nightmare is fresh in her mind as she crosses the threshold, her guardians hovering behind ready to catch her if she should fall. Claire’s pulse trembles like a leaf in her wrist. Jimmy Novak had washed his instruments of murder in holy water and prayed for forgiveness of his sins at family dinners; had sung in the choir: _nothing but the blood,_ that would make him clean and whole again. He had taken her on nature walks through the woods. He had loved animals; he cried over roadkill, for God’s sake. His hands on hers, steadying as she peered at a deer and her fawn through a camera lens, were the same that drew the knife across her throat less than a week ago.

She stands crosswise over the line between the sacred and the profane, breathing in the acrid smell of burnt paper that almost but not quite hides what lies beneath. One of their pictures hang on a wall; a stag crowned with a magnificent head of antlers, caught in the act of turning his head. He blankly regards her as he had the deaths of seven other teenagers with eyes that have been violently scratched out; his coat mutilated by the touch of fire. Snapped matches lurk in the colorless carpet like brittle bones.

“What is this?” Claire whispers. There is an aura about this place that compels her to whisper--the twisted reflection of holiness, bowing her soul down in a gesture like worship to a sense of _something_ larger than herself, the sum total of her comprehension. If she stays here long enough, if she listens hard enough, she thinks in a sudden bout of gut-wrenching claustrophobia, she might hear what her father had, and be infected by his madness--

“Claire?” Her father’s killer brushes her elbow, in a gesture intending to reassure.

“I’m okay,” she says. “I’m okay.”

To prove it she takes a step forward, then promptly turns around to be sick outside. When she is done Dr. Stiehl hands her a handkerchief from his breast pocket and pats her back with the strong, slender fingers that had dammed the bloody flow of her life inside her torn body until the ambulance came. She had woken from her coma to find her hand entwined in his.   _Why,_ she thinks almost wildly, _why would you care so much--_

“You don’t have to,” Dean says. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove to yourself, but you don’t have to.” His lips set stubbornly over his teeth in a glower. “You are _not_ your father,” he emphasizes.

“How do you know?” she snaps at him. “ _How would you know?”_

Dr. Stiehl glances at her, then, a flick of his eyes.

[...]

“You helped your father lure those children, didn’t you?”

“They could have been my friends,” she sobs.

“Ah, Claire,” Cass says. He wipes the tears from her eyes with his thumb. “If only you were the first to have done terrible things for your family’s sake, and even then I would forgive you without hesitation.”

“There is no forgiveness for me or my father,” Claire says.

“Then I will not forgive,” he says. “But neither will I judge.” He holds out his arms and she falls into them without hesitation.

* * *

“Shhh,” her father says.

She must have nodded off. She rouses, blinking the heaviness from her lids, following the angle of Jimmy Novak’s gaze. A speckled deer heavy with child is pecking at the grass. 

[...] 

* * *

 

“You,” she says, shaking. “It’s always been you.”

“Yes,” Cass agrees. Even now that the veil has been dashed from her eyes, nothing about him has changed. There is always such a glow about him, like a halo slipped down around his head. And when he smiles, and says he loves her, he looks so much like her father, that it hurts all over again, as if it's the first time.

[tbc?]


End file.
